I’ve
been breaking down HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE for the online
class I’m teaching and that movie is superb for this character
technique. Every major character has a fantastic character
introduction.

Character introductions are painstakingly
developed by screenwriters because the making of a movie (at least in
the past) almost always hinges on attachments – that is, attracting a
star big enough to “open” the movie – that is, bring in enough box
office on the opening weekend to earn back production costs.

When you have an actor like that, the studio will finance the movie.

(Okay,
now we could go into the fact that lately studios are less and less
willing to rely on stars to open movies and why, but this isn’t an
article on film financing, it’s an article on character).

And
since the character introduction is the first thing an actor will read
in the script, and may be the one thing that makes him or her decide to
keep reading, that character introduction may be your one shot at the
actor who will make your film or consign it to that grim warehouse (one
of many grim warehouses) where scripts with no attachments end up.

Actors
don’t always read the whole script. I am absolutely sure that all
your favorite actors do. And there are actors who convince great
directors to sign onto scripts that they love. There are actors who
love a script so much that they produce it themselves, without even
taking a role in it, to get it made.

Still, and I know
you may find this hard to believe - some actors only flip through the
script reading all their own lines, and make the determination of
whether or not they will play a part from that.

And so
no matter how brilliant the rest of your script is, an irresistible
character introduction may be your one shot at getting an actor who can
get your movie made.

But what does all this have to do with writing novels, you ask?

Well,
what I’m saying is that even as a novelist, it doesn’t hurt to think of
character in terms of casting. I know some of you design characters
(in novels as well as scripts) with actors in mind. I certainly do.
You may start writing a scene imagining a certain actor playing the role
of the character you have in mind, and use that actor’s voice. I do
this, not all the time, but fairly often. I can feel myself writing
for an actor, and imagining an actor saying the lines – but then ALWAYS,
at a certain point, the character just takes over. Everything I do
with character until that point is just treading water until the REAL
character shows up.

Then I forget all about actors and creating and designing - I’m really just following the character around taking dictation.

But
– until that point, imagining an actor, and writing for that actor, can
be a real help in attracting that mysterious being called character.

(I
would be worried about sounding completely psychotic at this point
except that I’m talking to a bunch of writers and I KNOW YOU KNOW WHAT
I’M TALKING ABOUT.)

So, if you’re willing to buy into
this metaphor I’m working on, that characters are much like actors, and
you have to design parts that will attract them to your story and
convince them to take on the role…

A really good way to do this is to create an irresistible CHARACTER INTRODUCTION.

Let’s take a look at some great ones.

- Rita Hayworth throwing back her hair in GILDA.

-
Dustin Hoffman on stage playing a tomato in TOOTSIE (and then the
equally classic introduction of “Dorothy”, struggling to walk down a
crowded NY street in high heels and power suit.)

Hoffman
as a tomato tells us everything about his character, both his desires
and problems: we see the passion he has for acting, the fact that he’s
not exactly living up to his potential, and how extremely intractable he
has, basically unemployable. It’s also a sly little joke that he’s
playing a “tomato” – a derogatory word for a woman.

This intro also tells us something about George
Bailey’s outer DESIRE line – he wants to do big things, build big
things, everything big. In fact, the story will be about how all the
LITTLE things George does in his life will add up to something more than
simply big, but truly enormous.

- Mary Poppins floating down from the sky holding on to that umbrella.

-
Katharine Hepburn in PHILADELPHIA STORY, throwing open the window
shutters on a gorgeous day and exclaiming, “Good going, God!”

- And okay, let’s just look at the mother lode of brilliant character introductions: HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE.

-
Dumbledore: an elderly, medieval looking wizard regally walks down a
modern street, using some flashlight-like device to kind of vacuum the
lights from the streetlamps into this tool.

-
MacGonegal: A cat on a porch meows at Dumbledore, then the shadow of
the moving cat turns into the shadow of a witch in pointed hat, and
MacGonegal walks regally into frame.

Hagrid: first
appears as a glowing light in the sky, very conscious reference to
Glinda’s magical appearance in the glowing bubble in THE WIZARD OF OZ
(and Hagrid will be the fairy godmother to Harry). Then the Wizard of
Oz reference has a humorous twist – Hagrid descends not in a shimmering
bubble, but on a Harley.

But the introduction of Hagrid
is more than humorous – it tells us a lot about the character. First,
the debate that Dumbledore and MacGonegal have over whether Hagrid
should have been trusted with the baby tells us a lot about this
character we’re about to meet. And when we see Hagrid carrying the baby
this hulking giant is as tender as a mother.

Harry
Potter: we see him first as a baby in swaddling clothes, left on a
doorstep (like every fairy tale changeling and also Moses in the
bulrushes, the child who grows up to be the leader of his people), while
the witch and the wizard talk about how important he’s going to be -
then the scar on the baby’s forehead is match cut to the scar on 11-year
old Harry’s forehead to pass time and introduce Harry again.

Again,
note that this introduction of Harry tells us a lot about this
character – in pure exposition and also by using the visual, archetypal
references to Moses – and, let’s face it, the baby Jesus with the three
kings (wizards and witch).

Olivander, the wand master: John Hurt slides into frame on a ladder, slyly glowing as only John Hurt can glow.

Nearly Headless Nick: pops his head right through the dinner table.

Of
course, having actors like all of the above has more than a little to
do with the power of those introductions – obviously we’re talking about
screen royalty here.

But those introductions were also specifically designed to be worthy of those stars.

So
add character introductions to your list of things to watch for when
you look at movies and read books. Note the great ones. The more you
become aware of how other storytellers handle this, the better you will
be at writing them yourself, for your own characters.

You know the question by now. What are YOUR favorite examples of character introductions?

STEALING HOLLYWOODThis new workbook updates all the text in the first Screenwriting Tricks for Authors ebook with all the many tricks I’ve learned over my last few years of writing and teaching—and doubles the material of the first book, as well as adding sixmore full story breakdowns.

Thursday, March 08, 2018

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Today
is International Women’s Day. And tomorrow A
Wrinkle in Time opens in theaters nationwide. So I thought I’d combine
those topics and write about the book, before I line up to see the movie
tomorrow. And then of course I can talk about the movie adaptation!

But
first, the book. And women. And writing.

A Wrinkle in Time is the story of thirteen-year-old misfit Meg Murry, who on a dark and stormy night is visited by three mysterious and iconically eccentric women who transport her, her child
prodigy brother Charles Wallace, and her high school crush Calvin O'Keefe, on a
cosmic adventure to rescue her scientist father from the evil forces holding
him prisoner on a distant planet.

Famously,
when author Madeleine L’Engle finished the book in 1960 (pre-YA is putting it
mildly!) it was
rejected by at least 26 publishers, because it was "too
different", and "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil,
and it was really difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adults'
book, anyhow?" Oh, and “It had a female protagonist in a science
fiction book.”

I’m eternally grateful to whatever forces of light were looking out for it.

When people ask me why I write what I do, or even just why I write, instead
of rambling on, I could just as well just say A Wrinkle in Time. Countless female author and screenwriter
friends, and a good number of the men as well, have said the same thing to me
over the years—I suspect just about every woman genre writer who came of age
pre-Harry Potter. Meg Murry wasn’t just our Hermione – she was our Harry
Potter, too. She is every smart girl who ever lived. We didn’t just read that
book—we lived it. We are Meg. And I’m thrilled that through the casting of Storm
Reid, the new movie is bringing even more girls into the universality and
outsiderness of Meg.

I’ve read just about everything L’Engle ever wrote, fiction and non. Once in a while I
realize I’ve missed something and it’s always a treat to add that book to my
shelf. She was a huge part of my extremely random spiritual education… in fact
she might have been singlehandedly responsible for any spiritual sense I did
have in my childhood and early adulthood. I was raised with both no religion
and a smattering of a large number of religions. My parents took me and my
siblings to Native American ceremonies, Orthodox celebrations, and Hindu holy
days. If I spent a weekend night with a friend whose family had a religious
practice, they’d drag me along to church or temple. But I was never sold on the
idea of a single male God (I mean, come on, really? I love men in general, but
omniscient? Let’s just look at the facts, here!).

Then A Wrinkle in Time introduced
me to the concept of the Goddess, in the three “witches”: Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs.
Who and the very intimidating Mrs. Which. That powerful, eternal feminine
triumvirate, whether you describe them as former stars, guardian angels,
messengers, centaurs (don’t you love that scene where the three children try to
explain them to Mr. Murry?) —is to me the Triple Goddess. It was the most
positive depiction of spirituality I’d ever encountered, and the one that made
the most sense to me: that the universe manifests itself in guardians, and we
are watched over, and we are loved.

(L’Engle herself was a devout Christian, yet the book often appears on the American Library
Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books, because of
references to witches and crystal balls, because it "challenges religious
beliefs", and because Jesus appears on a list of “names of great artists,
philosophers, scientists, and religious leaders".)
L’Engle’s equally profound influence on me (it’s inseparable, really) was as
a genre writer. I always gravitated toward the spooky, the thrilling, the
fantastical, the twisted, in my reading. I discovered A Wrinkle in Time when I was in sixth grade and something in my
mind said – “THIS is what a book is supposed to be, do, feel like.” It’s a
thrilling adventure with flawed but deeply moral characters, fighting for
cosmic stakes. While you’re reading you experience it as a breathless,
nail-biting ride, but the moral implications imprint on your soul.

In fact, I was so obsessed with the book the year I first read it that I
wrote a movie adaptation of the book. This was a pretty radical and prescient
thing for me to have done (at age ten!), considering a lot of adults don’t even understand that there
is such a thing as an adaptation process from book to screen. I had no inkling
at the time that I would grow up to work as a screenwriter and make a living
adapting novels for screen. And no desire to, either.

It was just that book. I wanted to
live in that book. I wanted to somehow create the world of that book around me.
I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything ever since (except, um, Hamlet) that feels as perfect in every
way – character, theme, structure, dialogue, action, spectacle, catharsis –
every single layer and detail.

I’ve read it dozens, maybe hundreds of times, and I learn something new
about how to tell a story every single pass. And not just about the how of it,
but the WHY as well. It makes no sense on the surface to write as dark as I do
and say that I aspire to the spirituality of that book, but it’s true.

As L’Engle said:

“Why does anybody tell a story? It
does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has
meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or
say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

I struggle with every book of my Huntress
Moon series (currently on Book 6, somewhere in the swamps of Act Two, Part
1…). These are very dark books. They confront crimes so heinous that I think
they can only be called evil. My FBI protagonist is often on the verge of
giving up entirely; he feels so powerless in the face of what he’s being
exposed to. But these crimes exist. Someone must face them and fight them. And
once again, I’m looking to A Wrinkle in
Time to remind me that even in the darkest abyss, the universe manifests
itself in guardians—and we are watched over, and we are loved.

There are other books of L’Engle’s that shaped me as a writer, an author, a
genre writer. She wrote thrillers: Arm of
the Starfish is a wonderful YA spy thriller, again with a profound
spiritual dimension, and even her dramas have such an thriller edge – I’m
thinking specifically of A Ring of
Endless Light – that I’d almost call them cross-genre. She put urgency and
cosmic stakes into everything she ever put on paper.

But A Wrinkle in Time is a
masterwork… and I guess it’s always in the back of my mind, the question – will
I ever be open enough, focused enough, skilled enough, mature enough… enough
anything – to write something that is everything I could write, in a perfect
world?

I don’t know. But at least I have a light to guide me on that path.

So how about you, readers and authors? Do you have A Wrinkle in Time experiences? Or was there another book that most
influenced your childhood and/or writing?

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